During an attempt to restore the damaged paintings, the upper layer of plaster was removed to reveal the underlayer which contained the preliminary compositions drawn by brush in a red dye called sinope, a mixture of special red earth and water. Sinope is the name of a town in Syria where the dye was produced.

Hiroko Suehiro age 16, became the first Miss Japan in 1908. Her photograph was chosen from among those of young ladies from respectable families. Suehiro placed sixth in the Miss World Competition organized by the US Tribune.__________In the late 1990s, darkly tanned skin came back in vogue, giving the ’60s trend a new twist. Instead of adopting a natural look, women called ganguro literally face-that-is-black, wear dark foundation on their faces and paint white circles around their eyes in homage to hip-hop culture. Other inspirations for the style include Barbie Dolls and Japanese pop singers. Accessories include a big wig, a scarf, long false eyelashes, white lipstick, and thick jet-black eyeliner. The trend is fueled by the belief that black skin makes the face look smaller.

29.12.02

Go is a game played by two contestants. In China and Japan it's just as popular as chess and draughts in Europe. There are a lot of legends about the invention of Go. One of these names the Chinese emperor Shun, who reigned from 2255 to 2205 B.C., as the originator of the game. It is said that he invented the game in order to strengthen the weak mind of his son.

28.12.02

a partial, annotated list of modern Korean fiction in English translation__________________gateway of literature by and about Korean adopteesincluding a link to 'ten thousand sorrows' which has a taint of the new age and something else I may not be able to read far enough to gather. the lesson of embarrassment the knee-jerk enthusiasm for the package, the quickness and facile optimism only skin deep, and the fun of putting neat images up. but I got the book and it doesn't ring true. ____

{not "here I am reading this exotic and fulfilling literature of another culture", but the hard and sure deep immersion into the real world of the other. real world, when you're there you only know it afterward, because when you're there you're only there. these women are heirs to a culture that must have had centuries of discipline behind it, 'must have' not because of historical fact but evidenced in the work they bring to the page. soul-anthems, frost on the long road, foreign lipstick, traditional clothing in an old trunk in a cramped apartment, brilliant minds in a cold dark season.}

25.12.02

"I’ve entertained the idea that I might just be getting old. But if it’s a function of my age that I remember hip hop as the people’s champ, so be it. I was raised on a vital art form that has now become a computer-generated character doing the cabbage patch in a commercial, or a comedian ‘raising the roof.’ That’s not influence to me, that’s mockery.
Hip hop my friend, it’s been a great 30 years filled with great memories, and it’s been fun to watch you grow. We’ve got dozens of broke innovators and plenty of mediocre millionaires out of the deal, but I really need my space now and we’ve got to go our separate ways. I will always love you, but it’s time for me to move on.
Yo, what happened to peace?

"When a leading Muslim cleric in New Delhi called on Indian Muslims to join the jihad in Afghanistan last year, Indian actress and activist Shabana Azmi, a Muslim and an appointed senator, suggested in a nationally televised interview that it would be no problem to air-drop the robed cleric into Kandahar to wage his holy war there.

No less sensational was the fiery response of the shahi imam of Jama Masjid, one of the leading imams of New Delhi: "I won't respond to singing, dancing whores."-While shooting a film about a shantytown, Azmi decided to observe a slum dweller for her role, and the two women became friends. A visit by Azmi to her friend's grim tenement shocked her into activism.

Upon her return to Bombay, she went on a five-day hunger strike to stop government demolition of slums, in the absence of an alternative.

"I have been the butt of Hindu and Muslim threats and intimidation," said Azmi, recalling the furor her film "Fire" sparked in 1996 with a story about two sisters-in-law who fall in love and seek erotic solace to escape their unhappiness. Mobs attacked the theater, tearing out the furniture, and the actress was accused of being "wicked" and "criminal" by extremist Hindu parties such as Shiv Sena."

Suzanne Valadonbelieved that "painting was the most difficult [medium] in which to reach greatness." She worked for thirteen years on her oils before she showed them. ...her early Portrait of Eric Satie. The musician, who was to be called "The Father of Modern Music", met Suzanne Valadon at the Auberge du Clou, a boisterous and inexpensive nightclub, where he played the piano. An eccentric and penniless bohemian, Satie affected a top hat, a flowing lavaliere, and wore a pince-nez. His room in 6 rue Cortot was next door to Valadon's, with whom he had a six-month liaison. The affair began on January 14, 1893, and Satie proposed marriage that same night. He immediately became obsessed with the artist, whom he called his "Biqui", writing impassioned notes about "her whole being, lovely eyes, gentle hands, and tiny feet." Valadon did Satie's portrait and gave it to him, while the musician did hers, which he kept. The two works hung together and were found after Satie's death in his room at Arceuil.

Cahun not only continued to make photographs in her new surroundings, but also began to transfer her strategies of masquerade from artistic production to political activity. With Malherbe as coconspirator, she launched a covert anti-Nazi resistance operation in which both women assumed disguises to undermine the German occupation. Cahun and Malherbe were arrested, tried, and sentenced to death, but ultimately released from prison at the war's end. In the meantime, much of Cahun's work had been confiscated or destroyed by German soldiers. She continued making photographs until her death in 1954.

Though this album contains a few soft-rock throwaways, such as "In My Life" and "Desperado," Mr. Cash’s more surprising borrowings—Nine Inch Nails’ "Hurt" and Depeche Mode’s "Personal Jesus," in particular—reaffirm his right to pirate anything he wants. Ultimately, though, it’s the title song that clinches this album’s greatness. The product of a seven-year-old, "Kubla Khan"–like dream about the Book of Revelation, it’s a thumping, staccato masterpiece destined to survive among the handful of Mr. Cash’s lasting contributions to American music.

22.12.02

{now we have class. pay attention. Boilly is the painter here. first thing you notice is....depends on your orientation somewhat, but. the central point in the image is a shading in and out above the old couple's heads. contrast that with the light from above. and the thin band of light at the door. and who is that guy? not significant guy right? only check out the girl just below him. she's the same figure as what most people would say is THE central figure in the image. ok check out where her head is. right in front of the guy's elbow. the guy is Boilly. elbows are everywhere in this painting. an elbow is the dominant foreground image. it balances her right breast, the most lovingly rendered breast I've ever seen. the guy's elbow her elbow and Junior's there at her left. now drop down and over what do you see? it's a timeline of growth it starts to seem almost bludgeoningly obvious. infant/breast toddler/breast then right at the moment of puberty and full bloomed young womanhood. ok go back to the nursing mom at left. see her head? what's it hiding? and above him to his left? another one. below that. ok on the other side of the billiard player past the dogs there's a guy who is almost all shadow, and being embraced by a girl who's mostly light, and now her head is hidden by... right. my first attraction to this painting was the girl/woman bending over the table, but then where was the center? that shading, amorphous place with no boundaries exactly not exactly brown or black, the center of the image is ah.... there and there and somewhere in there....and below that the old woman's face, almost in the center, and the pool cue pointing, could it be? to the place above the couple where their souls meet? something valentinish like that, something sentimental like that. but not cynical that's the key issue here. cynicism can't touch this stuff. the center is there, imprecisely, because....well it moves around really. he makes it move. there's some pretty hardcore courtship happening far right, and bright as can be at the edge of the shadows, her arm, her...yes another one. and at the far right edge of the billiard table see the boy, his...yes...and blocking his head her.....yes. and I don't mean to make it freakish, it isn't at all. he's playing. it's elegant play, and so much love for the movement of life, for women, for sex, and for the breast itself not separate from but in and of the warm heart of womanhood. it's there. you can ignore it or turn away from it, but it's not a choice really, it's there because Boilly put it there. the shadowy figure near center is echoed again to the far right, these guys are hats, father hats, fatherly hats, men. men and elbows. Boilly. A Game of Billiards. corny maybe some, but that love is bigger than sentiment. that love is real, nothing living is bigger.}

I truly believe that our duty as an architect or a designer is to designthings which attract luck, rooms which protect people...I don’t design things in any style, even less so in any fashion style,I design things for life states.

you have spent a lot of time in asia and you know the spiritual values of those
cultures very well. do you think that they tend to fuse with our wasteful
western culture, or do you think there is another possibility?

the thing about asia which interested me wasn’t so much the spirituality
as the sensorial approach, the rituals...there is nothing spiritual in spirituality.
the word spirituality was invented in the 19th century. I hate that word...
it is finding a way to forget the existential disaster, it is a series of rituals,
which correspond to the cosmos and they are rituals which
depend on your social class, the weather,
the relationship to animals-- this interests me. I think that any attempt
to integrate into the modern world can only be "pay attention to life",
existence, but not afterlife.

on the news they said that italians are afraid of unemployment,
criminality and pollution. what are you afraid of regarding
the future?

I think that the future doesn’t exist. what we think of today as the future isn’t the future.
people are always afraid of the future, and the future has always been a disaster.
like the present is a disaster. but rhetoric about the future bothers me,
because almost everything we do today we say we’re doing for the future.
the future is here now, let’s try to get organized now.
I don’t care about the future at all.

Magnetic bracelet
Terrence Kelleman, 2002
Held together by its own magnetic force, this bracelet is designed to form angular shapes around the wrist. The bracelet consists of 50 individual magnets, which can be adjusted to fit men or women simply by removing excess pieces. The incredible strength serves not only as a simple linking mechanism, but also provides hours of entertainment or relaxation for nervous fingers. Warning: These magnets are very strong; those using a pacemaker should avoid them. Keep 5 inches from computer disks, credit cards and any ferric recording devices.

21.12.02

In this ideogram used on clothes in Ghana we see one of the most common ideograms representing the Eastern star, the planet Venus, , the Morning star, and indirectly a new start to the day, combined with the sign , representing a rotation or an independent movement. It means Sesa woruban: I change or transform my life, or life transformation.

The above entry sign structure, but vertically placed and filled, , sometimes appears as a military sign for sentinel, and as it can stand for a private soldier.
When drawn with a very small, filled circle (i.e. a point), , it can in certain biological contexts stand for an aborted fetus of unknown sex.

20.12.02

Orange is a color between red and yellow. The orange fruit
is unique in its color and is the best example of this color.
The setting sun can appear orange as it approaches the horizon
and may also turn bright red before dropping below it. These
same color changes in the sun appear during sunrise as well. The
shift in colors of the sun is largely due to atmospheric
conditions, airborne microscopic dust particles, and light
refraction from moisture in the air.

{spectrum explication. colors described in a systematic and poetic fashion by a formerly sighted now blind writer. including hues beyond the tertiary like lavender saffron and pigeon gray.}

18.12.02

16.12.02

15.12.02

(hereafter referred to simply as Lester) was born in 1948 and raised a Jehovah's Witness in California. At the age of eight he was already a voracious reader and had started becoming a writer. His early years were difficult. His father was a binge drinker and an ex-convict who died in a fire of his own making when Lester was a boy. He was an outcast at school. He allowed himself to be sexually abused by a middle-aged man in exchange for comic books. At approximately the age of 11 his interests turned to jazz and away from his religious upbringing.He became interested in the beat writers, and then as a teenager he fell for rock and roll. In high school he skipped gym class for a week and was assigned a 10-page paper for every day he missed; he turned in a 50-page story called "Hector the Homosexual Monkey," which led to his lifetime ban from gym class. He tried college but didn't like it, especially since his roommates played Cream all day long but wouldn't listen to his Velvet Underground records - Lester later wrote that this rejection was what gave him an affection for distortion and other less popular sounds.

In any case it was Them's first solid national hit on this side of the pond, shooting straight up the charts and nudging into the number two spot only because the new Beatles single came out at the same time. And despite being a superhit, it's a totally bizarre song as the lyrics attest. The way Van barks "Wow, here it comes!" is enough to keep you awake nights, and the structure is unusual, changing from a vaguely Latinish balladic lament (the Bert Berns touch, again; the man never quite got the hot sauce out of his ears after his "Twist & Shout" conquered the world and though Van didn't suffer bv it, it did make some of his music predictable) into a sort of weirdo hillbilly roundelay, which is where the gawky lyrics quoted came in. There's no doubt that is was much a rock 'n' roll classic in its way as "Gloria", if destined by its form never to become such a standard, and even ends with the protaginist playing voyeur outside the window where the objects of his jealousy carry on in every unmentionable way his fertile pube brain can dream up.

{Lester Bangs the immortal scribe in a long liner note paen to the genius of Van Morrison's early work}

Joni Mitchell, with this record, has become a jazz singer. Her voice is her soul. Case in point: "The Circle Game." Mitchell's biggest pop hit, you'll still hear it in supermarkets softly wafting customers toward a happy nostalgia appropriate for the consumption of goods. Perhaps it's appropriate--the song fits comfortably within the carpe diem tradition. Seize the day. "The Circle Game" is the last song on Travelogue & on my first listen I have to admit I wasn't looking forward to it. The song has become a pop cliche, after all. Mitchell the jazz singer, though, surprises the listener with a version of the song worthy of Dinah Washington, a new title for the American Songbook. In addition to the titles I've already mentioned, I'd point to "Amelia," "For the Roses," "Refuge of the Roads," & "Hejira" as perfectly transformed. This slowed-down version of "Refuge" gives the listener a much longer perspective--the mature adult looking back on the youthful traveler. "Me here least of all," yes, exactly.

11.12.02

all this time I never knew. just like Marilyn Monroe. I didn't know she was the first Playboy pinup until just a few months ago. and just now I discovered I could put an image here. after all this time. I am heaving a sigh.

9.12.02

The installation by Alice Hampson, Sarah Foley, Sheona Thomson and Sebastian di Mauro was commissioned by the Friends of the Australian Chamber Orchestra to make a huge backstage area into a congenial place for their formal biennial dinner. The designers responded with a suspended artwork that cleverly uses the natural bending properties of veneers to evoke poetically the qualities of musical instruments. The whole was designed so that the veneers could be reused. The jury was very impressed with the imagination, economy and material understanding of the whole piece.

{everything at this site is inspiring optimistic and wonderful to behold}

8.12.02

the key is to seem blasé about it, la la, three friends of mine did that kind of stuff five years ago, in their spare time on weekends, and played all-city championship rugby, on weekends, during the week they were EMT's, one was writing a zoology textbook in his spare time during the week, the other two drove a van back and forth to the Mexican border for a sanctuary group in Michigan, in their spare time during the week.
me I'm knocked out. privileged. impressed. made optimistic. uncontrol is probably a logical outgrowth of a bunch of work on a bunch of people's parts, but it's a big jump up for me, coming out of a busy humdrum thoroughfare of internet-as-usual.

6.12.02

Joe Foster plays cornet and percussion, as well as dancing and singing. He has played in Mantonal, the Foster/Jenkins/Eubanks Trio, the Hundred Flowers Ensemble, he has danced with the Boris and Natasha Dancers, and is a participant in Peevish. Kelvin Pittman plays alto saxophone, Eb clarinet, guitar and drums. He is renowned for his work in Control R Workshop, Mesmer and Rocket Science and the Nigger Loving Faggots. Jean-Paul (JP) Jenkins plays electric guitar, electronics and alto clarinet. He has played with Peevish, Mantonal, and the Gringo Stars, and was previously known for his work in the Jaja Quaretette. Matthew Voga plays drums. He needs roots to bear fruits. Bryan Eubanks plays alto saxophone and percussion. He is also known as 1/2 of the duo Beds, and as the de facto leader of Fighting and Breeding. Together they represent more than Unity they represent Super Unity!

An excerpt from a much larger interview

We play freely improvised music, relying on each other and our ears to guide us into fruitful & useful conversation. No plans, no agreements; no structures exist to catch us if we fall. We are both light-hearted and life-serious, because this music is like the air we wish to breath. We are known for relishing unusual performance situations, playing outdoors, in stairwells, on bicycle rikshaws, in inflatable plastic bubbles, public parks, and busy intersections. We also tend to avail ourselves of a variety of performative behaviors, as they occur to us. In our improvisations we are like spheres balancing on spheres, actively conversing with/reacting to each other and telling our own truest stories in our original voices.

5.12.02

4.12.02

2.12.02

Summer days, summer nights are gone
Summer days and summer nights are gone
I know a place where there's still somethin' going on

I've got a house on the hill, I got hogs out in the mudI've got a house on the hill, I got hogs all out in the mud
I've got a long haired woman, she got royal Indian blood_____________I'm going to spare the defeated, I'm going to speak to the crowd
I'm going to spare the defeated, 'cause I'm going to speak to the crowd
I'm going to teach peace to the conquered, I'm going to tame the proud

Well, the leaves are rustling in the wood, things are falling off of the shelf
Leaves are rustling in the wood, things are falling off the shelfYou're gonna need my help sweetheart, you can't make love all by yourself.__________Well the old men 'round here
sometimes they get on bad terms
with the younger men,
old, young, age don't carry weight
it doesn't matter in the end

One of the boss' hangers-on
Sometimes comes to call
At times you least expectTryin' to bully you, strongarm you,
inspire you with fear
It has the opposite effect_____If you ever try to interfere with me
or cross my path again,
you do so at the peril of your life
I'm not quite as cool, or forgiving as I sound
I've seen enough heartache and strife____________Your charms have broken many a heart and mine is surely one
You got a way of tearin' the world apart, love, see what you've done
Just as sure as we're livin', just as sure as you're born
Look up, look up, seek your maker, for ('fore?) Gabriel blows his horn

Andrzej Jackowski His pictures belong recognisably to a generation which has felt the impact of Balthus and Francis Bacon, but though he says he has been mentioned in various art bboks as belonging to this or that trend, 'I don't feel close to Chia and people like that, who are really much more out of conceptualism. I do feel something in common with Christopher Le Brun or even Ken Kiff, though he's more surreal than I am. I respect a man like Paladino, but he's more mythic and - how can I put it - Jungian, dealing in a kind of tribal images mostly, while I'm more personal. I always try to find my own set of images. and to put them together in my own style. Ken Kiff says that fantasy and imagination are a way of talking about the real. It's a way of cooking the world and putting it into images.'

1.12.02

I feel something Bob-like, what is that? Where? or maybe when? would be the better question. A long time since or after and the wind that picks up days and carries them dust-like on, mixing up the steady scatterings of hours and years, like the upthrust mountains worn from rain and yes, that wind, again.

30.11.02

29.11.02

Eve Andree Laramee: I am curious about issues of authorship, the relationship between the artist and the institution. Currently I am developing a long-term performance project, Secret History, which began in 1997 and has had numerous permutations. At its inception, I conceived of it as a self-experiment on identity.______ I presented the work as a historical exhibition, complete with wall text and chronological organization, and positioned myself as the curator. I gave tours of the exhibition and fielded questions from viewers about the work. I invented documents and made photographs in which I dressed as other people. I produced hundreds of works through a fictional character, mostly works on paper, small sculptures and devices, as well as paintings

The character I invented, Yves Fissiault, was an electrical engineer (and secret artist) during the Cold War, involved in the aerospace industry for the Defense Department. He hid his artistic practice for fear of what his conservative employers might think. Fissiault was an amalgamation of a character from Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and facts taken from my personal imagining of my father, who had also been an electrical engineer during the Cold War and whom I last saw when I was five years old. I have strong associations with Pynchon, whom I love for many reasons, including the way he interweaves historical fact with outrageous, ass-kicking absurdity

In this piece, two hundred creatures cast in silicone and suspended in translucent oil are trapped within illuminated glass jars suspended from the ceiling of a darkened room. Although many are purposely ugly, the complete environment is eerily beautiful and haunting. Each creature whirs around in its liquid light-filled medium emitting chirps and snippets of song. When any individual jar is approached, the creature inside clams up and stops moving, seemingly in fright, and becomes a dead, sterile "specimen."

As a child she preferred the company of other mischievous children, and teetered on the edge of delinquency from age five on. Simultaneously, however, she showed such promise as an artist that other children were stealing her paintings and trying to pawn them off as their own.

27.11.02

26.11.02

25.11.02

Seeing and BelievingThe art of Nancy BursonBeginning in the early 1980s—when digital graphics were still in their infancy and long before software for morphing became easily obtainable—Burson produced a series of computer-generated composite portraits in collaboration with programmers Richard Carling and David Kramlich, who were then working at the Computer Corporation of America. The program created an average of several images by mapping facial coordinates and then finding their mean. Burson's attitude toward science is often steeped in irony, and her composites challenge earlier attempts to classify human physiognomies by such "scientists" as the eighteenth-century Swiss phrenologist Johann Kaspar Lavater and the Victorian anthropologist Sir Francis Galton—who was Darwin's cousin, the founder of eugenics, and the first to enlist composite photography in the now-discredited campaign to establish links between appearance, intelligence, and racial superiority____________As a visual experiment, Burson combined the faces of six men and six women, attempting to see which gender would dominate. She found that if you cover the mouth, the face appears more feminine. Like Mankind (1983–85), which is hanging nearby, this digital composite visualizes both popular fantasies and fears about what happens when genetic material mixes across race and gender. _____________Burson's photographs of healers challenge the average skeptic. Surely the halo surrounding one healer must be a peculiar refraction of light coming in through the window? Not so, insists the artist. This is the real thing, and nothing will shake her certainty.__________In the mid-1990s, Burson refined her ideas about the relative nature of beauty in a series of large-scale Polaroids. Instead of conforming to standard cultural ideals of attractiveness, the individuals in these photographs have faces altered by cancer, reconstructive surgery, or prostheses. In a world saturated with mass-produced fantasies of flawless beauty, Burson's warm, intimate Polaroid portraits—which often include other family members—ask us to reconsider our dreams of perfection and to confront our own vulnerability and mortality___________Warhead

Emira and I attended a solo violin recital by Maxim Vengerov last night. This was a rare kind of performance — he performed “without a net,” as the promotional copy claimed, i.e. with no accompaniment (piano or otherwise).

I am at an utter loss for words to describe the sublime nature of this man’s gift. I can only say that the performance left me breathless, grasping for a new vocabulary with which to contemplate beauty. I never knew that a performer could be so focused, so perfectly in the moment, so virtuosic and, for lack of a better word, musical at once.

At the risk of sounding completely over the top: I feel like I was in the room with an angel last night. Totally awe-struck; on the verge of (joyful) tears; ready to go out into the world with new eyes and ears.

And I never say out loud to them that my dear old people
Are columns of earth, walk around, sit in chairs,
discard cigarettes and write that's left of poems.
They were low lights between mountains visible
To the evening gaze, they were evaporate mornings,
They are not much but stones in the earth.......

______________

Beginning November 12, 2002,
George Bowering has been appointed
as the first Canadian resident poet to
Parliament Hill for a two year term.__________________ As Wah would say, I like the shift. It is an Olsonian shift if you look at it closely enough. By the sacred we mean things that we have envalued in spiritual terms. No matter how sincere we are, we still place our spiritual needs first. We are likely to remain humanists. We are likely to be at best Wordsworthian priests of nature, with all the egotistical sublime that entails. Olson called it "sprawl."

24.11.02

The result was an electrifying combination of old and new, with Robin increasingly exploring a more autobiographical vein in his songwriting. The Merry Band made three unforgettable albums Journey’s Edge, American Stonehenge and A Glint At The Kindling during their brief career; a live recording of their final performance in 1979 has only just been released. Better late than never, for sure. Glint ‘s centrepiece was the mighty Five Denials On Merlin’s Grave, which laid the foundations for Robin’s later 'Bardic' style, combining music and the spoken word in a potent distillation of the Celtic soul.

Since the ending of the Merry Band Robin has worked almost exclusively as a soloist, settling again in Britain in the mid-Eighties. Over this period he has released 29 recordings of songs, instrumental music and spoken word pieces. Latterly, he has come to excell in a form of music that cunningly blends all three elements, and in which the Celtic harp is the principal instrument. This has led to his being dubbed a 20th Century Bard; in fact, this is a pretty servicable description, for all its air of Victorian romanticism, as he has drawn consistently on ancient Celtic poetry and stories throughout his career. Perhaps more than any other contemporary musician, he has achieved a graceful synthesis of ancient and modern, in which each complements and infuses the other. His most recent album of original songs, The Island Of The Strong Door, shows this to stunning effect.

The ISB were recently described in a work of rock journalism as 'now all-but- forgotten'. It’s true that they have been largely ignored by the rock nostalgia industry that has cast its cyclopean shadow over the Nineties music scene, but their influence in the development of popular music is ungainsayable and a number of rock luminaries have recently stepped forward to acknowledge that fact, including Neil Tennant, Bill Drummond of KLF, The Cure’s Porl Thompson, and Robert Plant. 'The Incredible String Band were an inspiration and a sign,' said Planty, who also remarked of Robin’s unique vocal style 'If you don’t sing like Robin Williamson when you’re 19, you’re never going to sing like Robin Williamson.'

Muzsikás has performed with goatskin bagpipes, the hammered-dulcimer-like cymbalom, and regional string inventions the kontra and the hit-gardon. The kontra, popular in Transylvania, is a violin-shaped, three-stringed instrument with a flat bridge for uniform chords and triads. The cello-sized hit-gardon, from the East Carpathians, is a percussion instrument whose four gut strings are struck with a wooden stick or slapped on the fingerboard--definitely not regulation Suzuki bow position.

23.11.02

Järvlepp has been delving deeper and deeper into the world of pop-influenced contemporary "classical" composition. He has completely turned his back on the avant-garde modernism that he was rigorously trained in to concentrate on postmodern style. He has also taken an interest in Hispanic, flamenco, Arab and Nordic folk styles. The result has been a variety of accessible pieces of music that appeal to a surprisingly wide cross section of the public.

Championed by Igor Stravinsky and central to the development of East/West music, he forged a style all his own; a dark and mysterious blend of Eastern and Western music and instrumentation, influenced by the likes of Debussy, Messiaen, serialism, and Japanese traditional music. Winner of numerous major awards and commissions, Takemitsu was also well known in Japan as a film composer, and has scored nearly a hundred films, including works by Akira Kurosawa, Hiroshi Teshigahara and Shohei Imamura. Takemitsu is today the inspiration for a new generation of composers such as Tan Dun, artists searching for a fresh language that utilizes both Western ritual and Eastern tradition.
Of all the "Joycean" composers who created works based on Finnegans Wake, I think Takemitsu is the one whose music comes closest to the very essence of the Wake itself. For Takemitsu, who ironically admitted to knowing more about the idea of Finnegans Wake than the actual text........

20.11.02

19.11.02

This is an enjoyable jazz number. I don't know if it has anything to do with what the composer had in mind when he came up with this song's title, but I understand that, back in the '20s, saying that something was the "bees' knees" had a similar connotation to what later generations meant when they said something was "cool."

18.11.02

...and then the English teacher took photos of little black kids playing in the dust that is theirs and she cried when she read about Marilinga

nothing unexpected except this: the Olgas (Katajuta) were magic and on the way back we all sang 'pack up your troubles' and 'you are my sunshine' and best (and loudest of all) 'beautiful beautiful brown eyes' while the road followed us into town and the desert creaked towards night

Jacket is a free Internet-only quarterly review of new writing, with poetry,
creative prose, interviews, reviews, and informative feature articles.Below, a brief list of links to over seventy literary sites;
the links in this list take you to a fuller list,
annotated and illustrated, below.

17.11.02

Zurburan was mentioned with great emphasis by John BergerZurbarán was born in Fuente de Cantos, near Badajoz. In 1617, after training in Seville, he returned to Llerena in his native province. By 1629 he was back in Seville, where he became the city's official painter.

In 1634 he was in Madrid painting mythologies for the Buen Retiro, Philip IV's new palace, perhaps through the intervention of his friend Velázquez. His last years were not so successful and he died in Madrid in poverty.

Morandi at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in B.-A., Argentina so of course I think about the ones who built the page, who work/worked in the Museo, as their whole world began to go to shit. the love of art becoming more than simple luxury, all but the most vital parts becoming superfluous, stripped to the bones of human character and intent, most of us were given these illusions throughout our childhoods, that truth would win, that it could never be all in vain, that ignorance and evil would fall behind....

Morandi was the one artist Wayne Thibaud pointed to that stuck with me.

Francisco Bores y su familia""I insist on which my intention tried to give a more alive sensation of the space... My constant search in which it talks about the space lead to me, in 1950 to a new mutation: it is what the critic denominated " the white way ". I continued aspiring more greater luminosity, disembodyment at the same time and plus the figures. An attempt, in certain way, to come near to which they sought the abstract ones by purely figurative means and, mainly, to obtain another thing that all those schools or movements, to obtain a special transparency. It asked to me inner where they would take such experiences to me.
I create to know it now: for two years I have been returning to my first attempt to make a plastic synthesis of the true thing. My painting, that long ago was dark, is today clear. The composition, that was very tight, I want it now frees and loose. Anyway, the effort is same... the cycle is closed. " Citations of the artist

Victor Brauner The Surrealist, painted in 1947_________Acolo, sometimes misread as "Agolo" because of the unusual serif Brauner appended to the "c" in the lower left corner of the painting, was completed in November 1949; it is the second in a series of three similar works completed in November and December of that year. Acolo is a Romanian term and is translated as 'there'. The first and third versions are entitled La-bas (Over There or Yonder). Each of the three female images is in left profile with a prominent eye, and each is characterized by a gravid uterus with a distinctive fetus. A dog is attached to the figure's head, a fish to its back. A scepter-like object in the figure's right hand is variously a serpent, a double trident, or, as in Acolo, an acanthus._________other works by Victor Brauner, here, here and here, here, here, also here, which is from here, and here is a trove of Victor Brauner most especially 'Mimétisme antropomorphe de la conscience collective'His work was in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Howard Wolfson, which is being offered for sale through Richard Gray Gallery, previously blinked on this site.After breaking away from Surrealism in 1948, the artist developed an increasingly personal style. He devoted himself to passionate introspection and borrowed both from primitive art and occult science to express universal archetypes: “ My painting is autobiographical, it tells the story of my life. And my life is exemplary because it is universal."

Using her dialogue with an audience as a source of energy, Abramovic created ritualistic performance pieces that were cathartic and liberating. In Rhythm O, she invited her audience to do whatever they wanted to her using any of the 72 items she provided: pen, scissors, chains, axe, loaded pistol, and others. This essay in submission was played out to chilling conclusions—the performance ceased when audience members grew too aggressive. Truly ephemeral, Abramovic’s earliest performances were documented only by crude black-and-white photographs and descriptive texts, which she published as an edition years later—choosing the most iconic images to represent the essence of her actions.

Hotel Palenque perfectly embodies the artist’s notion of a “ruin in reverse.” During a trip to Mexico in 1969, he photographed an old, eccentrically constructed hotel, which was undergoing a cycle of simultaneous decay and renovation. Smithson used these images in a lecture presented to architecture students at the University of Utah in 1972, in which he humorously analyzed the centerless, “de-architecturalized” site. Extant today as a slide installation with a tape recording of the artist’s voice, Hotel Palenque provides a direct view into Smithson’s theoretical approach to the effects of entropy on the cultural landscape.

Ghetti, a carpenter by trade, explains why over the past 20 or so years he's devoted his spare time to carving miniature shapes and objects into pencil lead.{He} works at most for two hours at a time. Time is really irrelevant; some of his pieces await finishing touches years after they were started. He says he doesn't own a watch.

"I tell people that it takes two years, but it's not a constant thing," he says. "It's sort of an escape........

Do the Meditation!!! w/Allen Ginsberg!!!!!I got Grace Kelly Bing Crosby William Holden on the tube in "The Country Girl" Allen G. on the headphones, 16 Mozilla tabs of wondrous diverse profusion, a cup of fine cofee......_____________ and 3

12.11.02

Nudity, sexuality, prostitution, rape…. These are key themes in the work of Indonesian visual and performance artist Arahmaiani-not issues nice Muslim women are supposed to discuss in public.

Arahmaiani—whose name combines the Muslim word for "loving" with the Hindu word for "human"—has achieved international recognition as Indonesia's most accomplished, and certainly most openly feminist, performance artist. As a child in a religiously observant Muslim household in Jakarta, she wanted to be a prophet, like Muhammad, "but as a woman this was impossible," Arahmaiani recalls.

__________

Some Indonesian artists joined in the student protests. Through installations in exhibitions and performances, these artists expressed their criticism of the Soeharto regime. Indonesian 'protest art' has had some precedents: first during the colonial period, when Indonesian painters supported the struggle for Independence (1945-1950). The second was at the beginning of the 1970s when the 'New Indonesian Art Movement' (Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru) was founded. This movement supported the student protests against the government which took place in that same decade. Some members, like one of the founders, Harsono, are still active. The last part of the exhibition shows works by artists who are political activists as well. Arahmaiani (1961) and Harsono (1949) participated in the student demonstrations and observed the riots that took place in May 1998. The chaotic situation in which plundering, arson, murder, and rape were the order of the day inspired Arahmaiani to make a series of charcoal drawings with the title Tropical Elegy. Dark silhouettes watch passively while their house is burns. A woman is threatened with a knife. In New Order Wayang, dead bodies are impaled on a bamboo stake. The tree of life, used to signal the beginning and the end of a Wayang performance, has been placed in the middle. Above the tree, a seated figure with a necktie is in power. A tank is aiming its guns at the performance. The agression and violence used by the army and the police during May 1998 have been portrayed by Harsono in his series Republik Indochaos. Based on the enlarged form of a hundred rupiah postage stamp, these etchings are a documentation of 13 and 14 May 1998. Combining photographs, texts, and etching Harsono demonstrates a harsh reality: burning bodies, the army shooting, and the police with clubs beating up demonstrators. A portrait of Soeharto bears a diagonal stamp with the text 'expired'.

Surely Harriet owes her name to the titular spy of Louise Fitzhugh's classic children's novel. She's in the literary tradition of fierce, impossible, tomboyish girl children: bossy to her peers, frank to adults and possessed of an uncompromising dignity that frequently brings her grief. "It's awful being a child," her most astute great-aunt commiserates, "at the mercy of other people," and that's especially true for this child. Twelve years after her brother's death, Harriet's sister Allison is sweet, pretty and dreamy in the wilting mode of Southern femininity, but Harriet is no Scarlett O'Hara: "She argued with Edie and checked out library books on Genghis Khan and gave her mother headaches." She is the sort of child who, when asked by a Bible class teacher to write down her summer goals, hands in a piece of paper with a single black dot on it -- that's how the pirates in "Treasure Island" informed a man they intended to kill him. In short, she is an irresistible character, and the engine that drives the book.

10.11.02

{and then right next after that.....interstingly enough from wood's lot again....}

Under the threat of legal action by the New York Times, a poet has suppressed five* pieces he posted online.

Brian Kim Stefans had created five pieces that offered a kind of performative duet involving establishment media (the Times) and situationist rhetoric (Raoul Vaneigem). In his blog entry of Oct. 29, Stefans explained he'd been given a cease and desist order by the Times and 10 days to comply with it.He has complied, replacing his work with an Mickey Mouse image and brief note. For a sense of what he does, here's a sample of his work that might suggest certain of its parodic qualities.

{lawyer for NYTimes speaks softly now}
The editors at the Times appreciate a good parody and would not take action against it. However, the subject matter of this particular page appears to be more serious in nature. Therefore, even though we are sure that your intent was non-malicious, we must inform you that your use of the Times's name, logos and home page design and layout constitutes trademark and copyright infringement.While we respect your efforts to make a statement, we must ask that you do so in a manner that does not violate our proprietary rights, or the rights of our advertisers. Please remove the page from public display and confirm to us in writing within the next ten days that you will not use our home page in the future in this same way.

{selfsame situationist/parodist poeticizes thus}

.....
Sometimes it is just
the hands hanging from twin flagpoles
emanating from my breasts. I could shine them,
wax them, spit on them, but they
don’t write,
just hold out for the rest of the day
until I couldn’t brag of them any
longer – usually by mid-afternoon, say 3 pm.
I’d drink more coffee then, check my emails,
play some on-line Yahoo! games, like backgammon.
My flagpoles not buckling in the wind.

John Sexton Places of Power You may not sell, publish, license or otherwise distribute any of these photographs without the written permission of the photographer.!!!!!!!!! !{makes you wonder where microsoft gets all that gimme-gimme energy doesn't it?}

His work attracted the attention of Billy DeBeck, creator of the newspaper strip 'Barney Google', in 1933. Fred Lasswell became his assistant, and took over the famous strip after DeBeck's death in 1942. During World War II, Fred Lasswell served as a flight radio operator and created the strip 'Sgt. Hashmark'. Apart from working in comics, he was an inventor, coming up with a successful citrus fruit harvester, a technique to enable the blind to read comics, a bilingual laser disc and a hypercard stack for computers. He also produced a series of videos for children, called 'Draw and Color with Uncle Fred'.

31.10.02

28.10.02

27.10.02

"He was just smooth," says Estria. "Like, someone would do an E, and do it kind of loopy. It just sits there. Dream would make it flow." Once, he says, Francisco painted a piece entirely in yellow that was so vibrant it attracted bees.

26.10.02

25.10.02

The picture shows, as malignant powers, created by terrible Ahriman: monsters, divs - (daemons), pairikas - (she-daemons), are invading the world. They are killing Primary man - Guya-Martan and Primary bull. The Primary man likes Purusha (Indian mythology); Imir (Scandinavian mythology), Pan-gu (Chinese mythology). There are also fravashas - angels' forces and at the same time - souls of the future peoples Fravashas are fightng against evil powers.

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what we're looking for in Boilly is subtlety and wit. so the central figure in this painting is the man in the brown coat with the hat. see how he echoes the figure directly above him in the "Sacre"? he's the one figure most obviously looking at the art. see the girl behind him? (closer to the viewer) she can't see the painting right? too short. or maybe she can. but she's in a line with the hat and the figure in the "Sacre".

here's a detail of the man in the hat. see? no features no face no head. just a hat. Boilly is like that. we're working toward a lengthy analysis of "The Billiard Game". Boilly obviously loved women and he was a very funny guy.

Louis-Léopold Boilly was born in 1761 in the village of La Bassée, near Arras, the son of a woodcarver. From 1775 the boy lived in Douai with a relative, a prior of the Augustine order. It is not known who gave Boilly his first training. A very early practice of portrait painting, partly self-taught, seems to have launched him into his profession. By 1779 he was at work in Arras, busy with portraits. In 1785 he moved to Paris, where two years later he married Marie-Madeleine Desligne, the daughter of a merchant of Arras. His family portraits, conceived as intimate domestic scenes, attracted the attention of a provincial noble of literary bent, Calvet de La Palun, who commissioned him to paint a series of narrative genre subjects based on texts furnished by himself. From 1791 onward Boilly regularly exhibited portraits and genre scenes at the Paris Salons. When private patronage dwindled after the outbreak of the Revolution, he sought to reach a wider popular audience by painting boudoir scenes, of mildly licentious character, to be reproduced in quantity by the printmakers. A lukewarm supporter of the Revolution, he was denounced in 1794 to the Société Républicaine des Arts by a fellow artist, the Jacobin zealot Jean-Baptiste Wicar (1762-1834), for having painted "obscene works revolting to republican morality." The denunciation was forwarded to Robespierre's Comité de Salut Publique. At the height of the Terror this was a life- threatening accusation, of which Boilly managed to clear himself by painting Triumph of Marat (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille), which appeased the revolutionary thought-police. His wife had meanwhile succumbed to the anxiety caused by these alarms. Remarried in 1795, Boilly benefited from the pacification resulting from the fall of Robespierre.

Portraiture, having launched him on his career, remained to the end his most dependable source of income. His facility in executing small portraits rapidly and cheaply enabled him to be productive on an almost industrial scale, rivaling the output of the photographers of later generations. By 1828, well before the end of his career, he could claim to have painted more than five thousand portraits, each completed in about two hours. In searching for ways of capturing likenesses with speed, he tinkered with optical devices that, in turn, helped him to develop the illusionist techniques by which he brought off the spectacular feats of trompe-1'oeil still-life painting that astonished Salon audiences and irked the critics.